Eight community halls have been opened for people forced out of their homes by flood waters after a massive cold front brought heavy rain to Cape Town and surrounding areas on Thursday night.
”The facilities are open to people who decide to use them, although many people have decided to stay in their homes,” a spokesperson for the city’s Disaster Risk Management Centre, Johan Minnie, said shortly after 4.30pm on Friday.
About 15 000 people have been displaced by heavy rains in the Cape peninsula, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Saturday. About 49 residential areas, mostly in informal settlements, had indicated they needed help.
Gale-force winds and torrential rain throughout the night wreaked havoc across the area. The rain let up around midday on Friday, although another, smaller, front is expected to hit the region on Saturday afternoon.
Minnie said teams from various city departments and services had been busy throughout Friday dealing with local flooding in several areas. The Pholo Park settlement near Philippi had posed the ”major problem”, but all residents had now been evacuated.
He attributed the flooding there to blockages caused by litter and rubbish dumped in the stormwater drains.
Minnie said the situation was ”stable”, although staff were being kept out in the field for ”flood mitigation”.
No injuries or deaths have been reported as a result of the flooding, which caused great disruption to road and rail links in and out of Cape Town.
Other areas of the city affected include Athlone, Mowbray, Claremont, Guguletu and Khayelitsha.
The South African Weather Service said Saturday’s cold front is ”not a big one”. However, there are three weather warnings for the region, forecaster Francois Geffroy said earlier on Friday.
The first is for very rough seas, with swells exceeding 5m, for the area between the Orange River mouth and Plettenberg Bay. The second is for gale-force winds between Cape Point and Plettenberg Bay, which will moderate on Sunday.
The third warning is for ”very cold, wet and windy” conditions that are expected to persist through Friday and Saturday over high-lying ground in the Western and Northern Cape.
Very cold conditions are expected over the southern part of the Northern Cape, Little Karoo, central and southern Free State, Eastern Cape high ground, southern Drakensberg and Lesotho.
Rainfall over the last 24-hour measuring period (up to 8am on Friday) had been very heavy in some areas of Cape Town and the adjoining Boland, Geffroy said. These included Villiersdorp, 78mm; Stellenbosch, 51mm; Somerset West, 63mm; Groote Schuur, 84mm; Grabouw, 101mm; and Kirstenbosch, 110mm.
With the high moisture content and low freezing level, it was likely there would be lots of snow on the Cape’s mountain tops, he said. — Sapa